Planning your trip is important to make the best traveling adventure you could make !

I’ll share some recommendations from my own experience how to choose your destination and how to make an original trip with lots of fun and new discoveries.

First Phase: Choose your destination

There are 195 countries in the world today, choosing your next destination is not trivial, below my recommendations to help you make the best choice.

Choose your destination wisely
  • Make it Unique

“Once a year go some place you’ve never been before”

Dalai lama

For me first criteria, I choose a place that I’ve never been (except if the trip is not just a vacation but it has another reason like business trip or conference trip)

  • Define your goals and what make you happy

Second criteria, you need to plan your vision, why you want to travel and what you want from the trip ?

Some time we just have a destination in mind becasue we read about it, we know a friend who was there, we are curious to try a new kind of attraction, curiosity to visit at least one country per continent …

Add to that, you can use sticky notes and write down what destination you love to discover, what kind of activities you want to make that make you happy, and also define which traveler you are?

Post It ; write your preferences & collect them to create your vision !

Using the list you prepared with additional research, you can easily limit your choice from 195 to a shorter list, and of course you are not obliged to make all your todo list in one trip.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

If the list is too large, you can check the best period to travel, is there discount available in plane ticket ? there are always questions you could ask yourself to help you choose from where you should start.

Otherwise, you can combine two countries or more if they are close to each other and very far from yours (may be you won’t get the chance to travel again there). I recommend this combination only in case you will stay more than 10 days.

Honestly, I prefer one country per trip and discover many cities better than lots of countries saying ‘Hi’ then ‘Bye’ without living the country-experience.

“It is better to travel well than to arrive.”

Second Phase: Prepare yourself

When you decided which destination you want to go for, all what you need now to complete your planification process.

  • Plane Ticket:

It’s better to plan your trip in advance, so that you can have a cheaper plane ticket.

I recommend before 2 months.

Taking the plane ticket could be from different online website, but I recommend to take it directly from the airline companies and follow the discount period of each one near your destination.

  • Accommodation

Depending on your preference and budget you can choose different kind of accommodation such as: An Hotel, A hostel (you can even find hostels with a private room and private bathroom in your room for more compfort), You can look for an excellent house with great travelers reviews in AIRBNB.

Not because your budget can be limited, but to live the experience in a better way and live the authentic trip with the eyes of locals and their recommendations I highly recommend couchsurfing. Couchsurfers share their lives with the people they encounter, fostering cultural exchange and mutual respect.

Read more about this original experience from https://blog.couchsurfing.com/

  • Prepare your TODO list

I do believe that people don’t take trips, but trips take poeple. In fact, going on a trip may start with a lot of planning, but the truth is that once you arrive somewhere new, the area instantly begins to change you and may be your plans.

But for me I consider that preparing a great plan before the trip IS CRUCIAL, then I can adapt it with your new discoveries when I arrive.

Planning a new destination start with:

Explore the internet and search for top attractions then combine them with your hobbies and preferences defined at the beginning.

PS: I’m naming XXX the city or country I travel as an example to help you make your own plan

You can type in google those special keywords with the name of cities and countries you’ll visit “Must visit places in XXX”, “Top Sight Seeing in XXX”, “Best adventures in XXX”, “XXX through the eyes of a local”, “A local’s guide to XXX”. Definitely, you can find a lot of inspiring blogs from here your TODO list will be generated 🙂

I recommend to make a FREE WALKING TOUR in every city you visit, it’s an opportunity to get more live advice from locals (you can prepare some questions), get inpired with the history and mush visited places and guide recommendations for free !

  • How can I find delicious food everywhere I travel?

I live in a mediterranean, we have delicious food, lots of my friends use to bring food with them while traveling using conservation boxes because they don’t like to experience bad food experience. I even make that in my first trips.

Then I changed my mind and now I can find great addresses everywhere I travel even with all eating restrictings (no pork, no alcohol, no meat..)

Usually, I start with Instagram hashtags I try to write #XXXfood #XXXbestfood #XXXseafood #XXXdeliciousfood … and different combination.

Here ones of my best sea food I ate when traveling last year:

As eyes eat before via pictures, I prepare my list depending on pictures and review comments I see, then I verify with other reviews on their facebook page or google.

I use also google to find buffet sea food restaurants as I’m a biggest fun of this kind of food.

I search for more recommendations via facebook as well in travelers community.

Third Phase: Start your journey

Once done, I combine all the list I created and I save those addresses in google map, once done I make a zoom on google map and I start my journey with places near each other to save time in transport.

You can also use moovit or other mobiles apps

red yellow and white abstract painting
Pin your places

You can also walk when the distance isn’t that far, you can discover lots of new/good places between 2 destinations in your plan.

“Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure.”

Irving Wallace

Hope this pandemic will disappear completely and everyone can travel again and “make new adventures” !